The last (7th) IAXO collaboration meeting that took place on 3-4 July 2017 at DESY, Hamburg, was especial in that the IAXO collaboration was formally constituted. An initial set of 17 institutions from over the world have approved a collaboration agreement, setting the rules and basic management bodies of the collaboration. The near-term goal of the collaboration is to build a scaled-down prototype version of the experiment, called babyIAXO, to be presumably located at DESY.

The "Physics Beyond Colliders" Study Group was recenlty launched by CERN Management to explore the opportunities offered by the CERN accelerator complex and infrastructure to get new insights into some of today's outstanding questions in particle physics through projects complementary to high-energy colliders and other initiatives in the world.

The German community interested in IAXO gathered at DESY, Hamburg, on May 24th. The meeting had the aim to discuss the physics cases that can be investigated with IAXO, as well as the status of the project and next steps. In addition, the current involvement of German groups was presented, and potential future collaborations were discussed.

Italian IAXO collaborators are organizing a IAXO workshop in Frascati on April 18-19th.

The workshop is intended to simulate the large italian community of the theoretical physicists, particle physicists, astrophysicists, cosmologists, ect, in particular from INFN, INAF, ASI and the universities interested to contribute to the IAXO proposal

In its 112th Meeting held on 14-15 January 2014, the SP and SPS Committee emitted formal recommendations after the reception of our LoI. The full minutes of the meeting can be found here. The committee acknowledges the physics of IAXO and recommends the collaboration to proceed with the Technical Design Report. The paragraph addressing IAXO reads:

The International Axion Observatory (IAXO) is a proposed fourth generation axion helioscope. It aims at a sensitivity much improved with respect to past and current axion searches, with real discovery potential.

The conceptual design of the experiment has been finished and a Letter of Intent submitted to CERN. Recently, the SPSC has recognised the physics case of IAXO and has recommended to proceed with a Technical Design Report.